Free English Literature Dissertations - Now, Instead, The Notions Of Robespierre That A Society Could Be Shaped
Now, instead, the notions of Robespierre that a society could be shaped according to plan, were compared to the organic ‘natural’ development of English society; by comparison, the rule-constricted ‘mechanic’ (Coleridge Literary Remains (written 1812; published 1836), in Hopkins p.111-112) dramas of the French continued to be compared unfavourably to those of Shakespeare and his
organic form[with] himself a Nature humanised, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than our own consciousness
(ibid.).
The difficulty of affixing a clear genre to plays such as Troilus and Cressida, the huge number of events compressed into the history plays, and the diverse casts of the plays that had caused some consternation for Dryden and Tate were now positively championed as a reflection of the organically evolved English society, compared to the cruel logic of the leaders of the French revolutionary movement. England remained free of revolution, and Shakespeare remained on a pedestal, although some small amount of new reasoning had had to be applied to keep him there.
It might be supposed that, for some Romantic critics, any attempt to politicise Shakespeare’s plays such as the playwright critics of the Restoration had done would have obscured the core ‘idea’ that Charles Lamb, amongst others, sought. It is significant, though, that King Lear was not performed between 1820 and 1830, both from a political motive sensitivity towards the ailing George III, whose age and madness invited obvious parallels with King Lear himself and from an artistic motive: these parallels, once made blatantly obvious by being enacted on stage, would detract from the true ‘idea’ of the play, that is, a critique of the inhumanity of man. The same could also be argued for the exclusion of Antony and Cleopatra (or indeed All For Love) with its implicit parallels with the infidelities of the Prince Regent. The case of King Lear, though, which Hazlitt, in The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, considered ‘the bestof plays’ (in Howe vol. IV p.257), is more complex than at first it seems, particularly when examined in the light of the aftermath of the French Revolution. If the ageing tyrant Lear himself seems to mirror George III, then what is one to make of the parable of his children, two of whom rebel against him? The import of the play seems to be that kingship is innate, and that an attempt to rebel against it cannot be vindicated, regardless of whether the king is tyrannical or insane. Many of the Romantics seem to use this reading as a parallel to the French Revolution, with the Edmund-like Robespierre toppling the regime of Louis XVI; a tyrannical absolutist monarch, but a monarch none the less.
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